Community groups present cases to CBRM for more funding

Cape Breton Post

Published: Feb 06 at 12:06 a.m.

Members of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s council received autographed basketballs from members of Basketball Cape Breton during a stakeholder consultation session held Monday in Sydney, including District 12 Coun. Jim MacLeod, in the foreground. - Elizabeth Patterson

SYDNEY, N.S. — From children armed with basketballs who want to keep playing their favourite sport to the difficulties in keeping a theatre open in Cape Breton, Cape Breton Regional Municipal council heard a wide variety of funding pleas from organizations throughout the municipality at a stakeholders budget consultation session on Monday.

Monday’s session was for community members and organizations with funding requests that fall outside of the Municipal Grants Program Policy, generally for amounts over $25,000. Some of the requests came from organizations who receive funding each year while others applied for the first time.

For a small museum like the Glace Bay Heritage Museum, the $40,000 requested along with $20,100 fundraised will go a long way to keeping the facility open. Councillors cheered curator Elke Ibrahim’s efforts over the years to keep the facility up and running. District 10 Coun. Darren Bruckschwaiger said that while promises couldn’t be made Monday, the museum’s request would certainly be considered.

“This museum has always persisted but it always seems to fall through the cracks — I hope this year it doesn’t,” said Bruckschwaiger.

Another museum requesting help was the Sydney Mines Community Heritage Centre, which asked to maintain its $25,000 funding which it uses to keep the Cape Breton Fossil Centre open.

Two sports groups, Basketball Cape Breton and the Cape Breton Gymnastics Academy, presented together in their hopes of persuading council to let them rent the Bicentennial Gym for a long-term period so they can build roots in the community and expand their respective programs.

The council chambers were lined with supporters including a group of children who presented each councillor and the mayor with basketballs autographed with the names of those who play the sport in this area, a gesture met with smiles and applause.

“We would like to see long-term tenancy because when we are using a CBRM facility it makes our programs much more accessible and affordable so we can put the money into the programs and into the staff rather than overhead,” said Cathy Huntington of the Cape Breton Gymnastics Academy, which formed six years ago and now has more than 600 students involved.

“I’m sure we could go and really push to purchase a building but we feel like it would really change our goal and the effectiveness we would have towards the kids in our community.”

Huntington and Chris MacPhee of Basketball Cape Breton, which has more than 700 children involved, would like to see the municipality give their groups a long-term lease so they can remain in place at the Bicentennial for at least five to 10 years.

But that longevity and stability would come at a price, said MacPhee.

“We want them to renovate the building so we have multiple (basketball) courts to play on — if we could have more courts to play on we could have more kids playing — we just want to rent the space from them but we need them to upgrade it for us to maximize the use,” said MacPhee, adding they would like to see the numbers of basketball courts expand from the present one to three.

While agreeing to a long-term lease doesn’t cost much, the renovations to keep the groups in place could be expensive but the exact amount isn’t known at this time. But MacPhee is confident council will give the sporting groups due consideration

“I think it went very well. They seemed to be on board and they see what the greater picture is here,” said MacPhee, adding that basketball is now more popular in Canada than hockey and that it will only keep growing in popularity among youth as a sport.

“We just want them to understand the value that the Bicentennial has and how important it is to all these families that we affect to be really something secure and long-term,” said Huntington.

A variety of arts-related groups also made impassioned pleas to council for further funding to maintain their presence or, in the case of the Highland Arts Theatre (HAT), enough to simply keep going.

HAT artistic director Wesley Colford said that while HAT has accomplished a lot in its first three years, it has done so with next to no financial assistance and only one paid employee. To remain sustainable, Colford asked council to consider funding the theatre $50,000 so it can keep going and producing original productions that attract people to Sydney’s downtown core.

If council funds HAT, then other layers of government will be more likely to fund the theatre as well, said Colford. So far, it keeps going mainly through ticket sales, the owner and a legion of volunteers.

“This method of operation is unsustainable,” said Colford, who also doesn’t draw a salary from the theatre. “It needs to change if we are to continue our operations for the next three years and beyond. If it doesn’t, the Highland Arts Theatre will surely fall.”

HAT is presently the second-largest theatre company in Nova Scotia but unlike Neptune, the largest, it receives little government money. In 2017, HAT received about six per cent government funding mainly through Arts Nova Scotia and Canada Summer Jobs programs and $5,000 from the CBRM. Neptune receives about $1.9 million of its $6.64 million budget from government sources. Other theatres smaller than HAT also received government money.

The fact that theatres on the mainland are receiving provincial and federal funding while local ones are refused drew the ire of several councillors.

“The funding models may have worked 20, 30 years ago but they need to change,” said Deputy Mayor Eldon MacDonald. “We’re being shortchanged.”

“We need to look at theatres like the HAT and the Savoy as part of the creative economy,” said District 11 Coun. Kendra Coombes. “They’re creating an economy that needs to be supported.”

The Savoy Theatre requested $340,000 to go towards their capital project which will see improvements to the building structure, upgrades to mechanical and heating systems and improvements to the theatre’s sound and lighting systems.